


THE ROAD STRETCHES OUT AHEAD OF US

by AgnesClementine



Series: FIGHTERS OF THE GOOD FIGHT [15]
Category: Supernatural, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, M/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:07:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27069124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgnesClementine/pseuds/AgnesClementine
Summary: “I'm the one that's been with him every single day for the past two years, while you've been off to college going to pep rallies. We will find Dad, but until then, we're gonna kill everything bad between here and there. Okay?”Diego doesn’t say out loud how he thinks that’s the only thing they can do for now.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves/Dean Winchester
Series: FIGHTERS OF THE GOOD FIGHT [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1301294
Comments: 75
Kudos: 118





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, people, I live. This is very short but I was starting to get antsy with not posting anything dshjkd. School's kinda scattered bc of the virus situation, so everyone is fumbling with assignments and deadlines, BUT I hope I'll get a hang of everything soon (I actually hope we'll go online) so I can start writing more often again. Fingers crossed it won't take me this long to post the next chapter sdhvdhjvf
> 
> I told this to my friend, but I'm telling it to you guys too: Can't I just be dumb and vibe? Must I acquire,,,knowledge??
> 
> Anyway, yes, as always, let me know what you think and enjoy! :)
> 
> (I missed you, guys! <3 <3 <3)

Blackwater Ridge is a bust. Well, not completely; they save the unassuming civilians and they kill the monster. But they don't find John.

Sam is furious. It's a simmering sort of rage, but just barely, and even Diego can see it. Mostly because he can understand it; Sam is angry because the alternative is to be heartbroken. And Diego understands that too, if in some weird backward way; he’s furious about Five, and Ben, and the rest of his siblings, and his mom, and Pogo, and about their lives- he’s furious about all of it so much it’s like a physical pain sometimes, hitting him so hard he can hardly see. But it keeps him moving when the other option is to be useless.

Really, the only things in his life he’s not angry about are Dean and Sam. And even now, he’s starting to get angry _for them_.

They should have it easy- they deserve to have it easy. But good people always suffer the most.

“Can I get you anything else?”

He shakes himself out of his thoughts as the waitress speaks. She’s blonde and leggy and wearing short shorts and Dean flashes her a grin, pen between his teeth, when he looks up before he turns to Diego, arching an eyebrow in question.

Diego shakes his head. “No, just the check, thanks.”

She nods and leaves, sparing Dean one last disappointed glance as she goes. Not that Dean notices, already engrossed in…whatever it is he’s doing with the newspaper (because he sure as hell isn’t reading the sports section).

Diego bites down on a grin and kicks him lightly under the table.

Dean jerks.

“What are you doing?”

Dean turns the papers to show him; the page is opened on obituaries and Dean has taken to circling some with his pen.

“Okay,” Diego says, “so. We’re taking a hunt, huh?”

Dean shrugs. “Better than just sitting on our asses.”

Diego can’t disagree with that. Just-

“You think Sam’s up for it?”

Dean looks down, mouth pursed unhappily. “Yeah, well,” he starts, “he has to be.”

And that’s that on that because Sam comes back from the bathroom and drops into his seat.

Dean immediately passes him the newspaper. “Here, take a look at this, I think I got one. Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin. Last week Sophie Carlton, eighteen, walks into the lake, doesn't walk out. Authorities dragged the water; nothing. Sophie Carlton is the third Lake Manitoc drowning this year. None of the other bodies were found either. They had a funeral two days ago.”

Sam takes the papers in his hand and frowns. “A funeral?”

Dean glances at Diego to make sure he’s talking to the both of them. “Yeah, it's weird, they buried an empty coffin. For, uh, closure or whatever.”

“Closure?” Sam almost scoffs. “What closure? People don't just disappear, Dean. Other people just stop looking for them.”

Huh.

Diego shifts in his seat.

Dean narrows his eyes at his brother. “Something you want to say to me?”

Sam sets his jaw. “The trail for Dad. It's getting colder every day.”

“Exactly. So what are we supposed to do?” Dean asks back.

They’re all at the end of their rope. John knows how to make himself disappear and it looks like he pulled every trick out of the book for this disappearance act.

“I don't know,” Sam says. He might as well have thrown his hands up in frustration. “ _Something. Anything._ ”

“You know what? I'm sick of this attitude,” Dean starts, loudly, and Diego kicks him again. Not so lightly this time. “You don't think I wanna find Dad as much as you do?”

“Yeah, I know you do, it's just-“ Sam fumbles, backpedaling.

“I'm the one that's been with him every single day for the past two years, while you've been off to college going to pep rallies. We will find Dad, but until then, we're gonna kill everything bad between here and there. Okay?”

Diego doesn’t say out loud how he thinks that’s the only thing they can do for now.

Sam rolls his eyes but he looks at least somewhat chastised.

“All right,” he agrees. “Lake Manitoc. How far?”

  * ····



They don’t talk much on the drive to the Lake Manitoc, but Dean plays his cassettes and when they all switch places; Sam sleeping in the back and Dean in the passenger seat, touching shoulders with Diego while he drives, everything that’s happening seems less…heavy. There’s no stark contrast with the light of day, when it’s like a rainy could floating above their heads, following them.

But, also, with everyone sleeping, as the night falls over them like a cloak, Diego aches for his siblings. He tries not to think about them, though it’s hard when there’s nothing else to focus on. Thinking about them never makes him happy, but sometimes memories hit him and all he wants to do is go back.

  * ····



The Impala pulls up in front of the Carlton house. Bracketed by the trees, in the middle of the woods, Diego can’t decide if it’s ridiculous or fitting that the outside is painted deep, if- granted- faded, green.

The Impala's engine stops and the three of them climb out. Diego immediately shivers at the dampness in the air.

They climb up the porch steps and Dean knocks on the door.

A guy around their age opens it, looking at them inquisitively.

“Will Carlton?” Dean asks.

The guy nods. “Yeah, that's right.”

“I'm Agent Ford,” Dean starts, reaching into his pocket to fish out his fake ID, “these are Agent Hamill and Agent Plant. We're with the US Wildlife Service.”

“Three of you?”

Sam chuckles awkwardly, “Yeah, ah, new department policy for younger agents.”

“We’re here because of Sophie,” Diego pipes u before Sam’s lie can be questioned.

Will blinks, says, “Right,” and then steps out of the house to lead them around to the back.

Ahead of them, the Sun is reflecting from the lake’s surface and in the distance, on the dock, a lone figure sits. It’s an older man whom Diego immediately takes as the father, Bill Carlton.

Will points at the lake, tells them, “She was about a hundred yards out. That's where she got dragged down.”

The trio shares a look and Dean asks, “And you're sure she didn't just drown?”

“Yeah. She was a varsity swimmer.” Will stares at the water. “She practically grew up in that lake. She was as safe out there as in her own bathtub.”

“So no splashing?” Sam asks. “No signs of distress?”

Will shakes his head. “No, that's what I'm telling you.”

“Did you see any shadows in the water? Maybe some dark shape breach the surface?”

“No,” Will says. “Again, she was really far out there.”

“You ever see any strange tracks by the shoreline?” Dean asks.

Will frowns. “No, never. Why? Why, what do you think's out there?”

“We'll let you know as soon as we find out,” Diego says and starts backing up, heading back towards the car with Dean.

Then, Sam asks, “What about your father? Can we talk to him?”

Will turns to look at his father, then back at them, conflict on his face. “Look, if you don't mind, I mean...he didn't see anything and he's kind of been through a lot.”

Sam nods, says, “We understand,” but every line of his body is disappointed. He wants answers and at this point, it doesn’t really matter the answers to _what_.

He joins them and they go back to the Impala.


	2. 2.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi. Hello. My brain won't cooperate with me ashkbdhjb
> 
> But anyway, I finally found some time to write this out and post it. Honestly, I can't wait to post another fic that's not ep-based lol, but having a,,,,guideline for scenes and dialogue really helps when your brain is being a jerk XD
> 
> Let me know what you think and enjoy! :)

“Now, I'm sorry, but why does the Wildlife Service care about an accidental drowning?”

Dean really wishes people would mind their damn business.

“You sure it's accidental?” Sam asks. “Will Carlton saw something grab his sister.”

Sheriff Jake Devins looks at them over his shoulder. “Like what?”

Sam and Dean exchange a glance.

They walk inside the sheriff’s office and he motions to the chairs in front of his desk.

“Here, sit, please,” he tells them.

They sit. Then, the sheriff says, “There are no indigenous carnivores in that lake. There's nothing even big enough to pull down a person, unless it was the Loch Ness Monster.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, barely able to shove it past his lips.

The sheriff laughs.

“Right,” Dean mutters and feels Sam’s eyes on him.

Sheriff starts talking, oblivious to them. “Will Carlton was traumatized, and sometimes the mind plays tricks. Still-“ he sits into his own, undoubtedly cushier chair across from them, “-we dragged that entire lake. We even ran a sonar sweep, just to be sure, and there was nothing down there.”

“That's weird, though,” Dean says, “I mean, that's, that's the third missing body this year.”

The sheriff looks at him a bit cross. “I know. These are people from my town. These are people I care about.”

“I know,” Dean responds. Though, he can never be sure with law enforcement.

“Anyway,” the sheriff sighs, “all this...it won't be a problem much longer.”

Dean frowns. “What do you mean?”

The sheriff looks at him strangely. “Well,” he starts, “the dam, of course.”

_Aw, crap._

“Of course, the dam,” he agrees. “It's, uh, it sprung a leak.”

“It's falling apart,” the sheriff says. “And the feds won't give us the grant to repair it, so they've opened the spillway. In another six months, there won't be much of a lake. There won't be much of a town, either. But as Federal Wildlife, you already knew that.”

“Exactly,” he agrees again.

He’s so glad Diego is not here to laugh at him.

Fingers crossed Sam doesn’t tell him about this, the traitor.

There’s a knock on the door and they all turn to the dark-haired woman standing at the doorway.

“Sorry,” she says, looking between them, “am I interrupting?”

Sam and Dean get up as she says, “I can come back later.”

“Gentlemen, this is my daughter,” the sheriff says.

Dean grins and shakes her hand. “It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Dean.”

“Andrea Barr. Hi.”

“Hi,” he responds and can feel Sam mentally rolling his eyes at him.

“They're from the Wildlife Service. About the lake.”

Andrea blinks at them. “Oh.”

Slipping past her, a little boy appears.

“Oh, hey there,” Dean says, surprised by his sudden appearance. “What's your name?”

Despite his best effort to be nice, the kid walks away without acknowledging him. And Andrea follows.

“His name is Lucas,” the sheriff says.

They watch Andrea hand him some crayons as she sits him down at the table in the main room.

“Is he okay?” Sam asks.

“My grandson's been through a lot,” the sheriff says. “We all have.”

He goes to the office door and Sam and Dean follow after him.

“Well, if there's anything else I can do for you, please let me know,” he tells them as they leave the office.

“Thanks,” Dean says, eager to get out of here. Diego is waiting for them at the diner and Dean is starving.

“You know, now that you mentioned it, could you point us in the direction of a reasonably priced motel?” Sam asks.

“Lakefront Motel,” Andrea tells them. “Go around the corner. It's about two blocks south.”

Sam nods at her. “Thanks.”

As they’re leaving, Dean notices that Lucas is watching them while Andrea is telling him about going to the park later. Dean waves at him but the kid doesn’t wave back.

  * ····



Diego looks ready to stab someone when they find him. He’s sitting at the booth in the back, head leaned on one hand, and angrily chewing his fries.

“Who pissed in your cereal?” Dean asks him, sliding into a seat, amused.

Diego cuts his eyes over at him. “Did you know that it takes about two hours to crochet a baby blanket?”

“Uh.”

“I do. Because that waitress told me. After an hour-long small talk. Why the fuck do people think I want to talk to them?”

Dean chokes out a laugh and regrets it when Diego kicks him in the shin under the table.

“Ow!”

“Oops. My bad.”

Sam clears his throat. “And did you find out anything?”

Diego sighs. “Not really. Everyone is pretty shaken by what happened. But not too shaken. Which also checks out considering how many people drown in that damn lake.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees.

Dean groans, “Great, this means we gotta do some good old fashioned research. Yay.”

  * ····



Sam is typing on his laptop, furiously going through everything he can find on the lake and the drowning. Dean is going through his clothing and Diego is lying on the bed, spinning a blade in his hand.

“How do you two get anything done?” Sam asks when he looks up from the screen.

“We flip a coin,” Diego monotones.

Sam snorts and says, “So there are three drowning victims this year.”

“Any before that?” Dean asks, folding up his shirt. It ends up a bit wonky so he just balls it up and drops it on the bed.

“Uh, yeah,” Sam says, typing.

Diego gets up to look at the screen over his shoulder.

He’s got a browser window open to The Lake Manitoc Tribune.

“Six more spread out over the past thirty-five years,” Sam says. “Those bodies were never recovered either. If there is something out there, it's picking up its pace.”

Dean tosses an unidentifiable piece of fabric onto the bed. “So, what, we got a lake monster on a binge?”

Sam leans back in his chair. “This whole lake monster theory, it just bugs me.”

“Why?” Diego asks and Dean comes over, shoulder to shoulder with him.

“Loch Ness, uh, Lake Champlain, there are literally hundreds of eyewitness accounts, but here, almost nothing,” Sam explains. He points at the screen, where the picture of the lake is displayed. “Whatever it is out there, no one's living to talk about it.”

Sam scrolls to the comments section of the article and then Dean says, “Wait, Barr, Christopher Barr.” He points at the screen, leaning over Sam. “Where have I heard that name before?”

Sam clicks the link Dean is pointing at; Christopher Barr, the victim in May.

A new page opens. 

LOCAL MAN IN TRAGIC ACCIDENT

The picture loads and it shows a police officer with a kid in his arms.

“Oh,” Sam says. “Christopher Barr was Andrea's husband, Lucas's father,” he tells Dean.

“The woman from the station?” Diego asks.

Sam nods at him and keeps reading. “Apparently he took Lucas out swimming. Lucas was on a floating wooden platform when Chris drowned. Two hours before the kid got rescued.”

Sam opens the photo on a new tab and says, “Maybe we have an eyewitness after all.”

Next to him, Dean says, “No wonder that kid was so freaked out. Watching one of your parents die isn't something you just get over.”

Diego looks at him and touches his hand in comfort; because they’ve known each other for long enough that Diego knows he’s not just talking about this.

  * ····



They find Andrea on a park bench, watching Lucas who sits at the table a little ways off, coloring and playing with toy soldiers. All around them, kids are laughing and running.

“Can we join you?” Sam asks her.

She looks up and when she recognizes them, she says, “I'm here with my son.”

Dean looks over at him. “Oh. Mind if I say hi?” He asks but doesn’t wait for an answer.

Andrea watches him go with an unimpressed expression on her face. She turns to Sam. “Tell your friend this whole Jerry Maguire thing is not gonna work on me.”

Sam sits down next to her, not even sure how to explain to her how wrong she is. “I don't think that's what this is about.”

Dean only has eyes for Diego. Honestly? Sam doesn’t know how they survived this long.

  * ····



“How's it going?” Dean kneels down next to the bench where Lucas is coloring.

Lucas doesn’t respond, so Dean picks up one of the toy soldiers scattered on the tabletop.

“Oh, I used to love these things,” he says, remembering how he and Sam used to play with them. He imitates the sounds of guns going off and explosions- but that doesn’t get a reaction either so he tosses the toy down.

“So crayons is more your thing? That's cool. Chicks dig artists,” he says just for the sake of saying something.

There’s a pile of drawings on the bench and Dean scoots it closer to himself, looking through the drawings. The top one is of a big black swirl that he’s not sure how to interpret, but the second one is clearly a red bicycle.

“Hey, these are pretty good,” he says. “You mind if I sit and draw with you for a while?”

He picks up a crayon. It feels unfamiliar in his hand. Damn, he can’t remember if he ever really colored or drew as a kid.

“I'm not so bad myself,” he brags, taking a sheet of paper and starting to draw. As he goes, he starts speaking.

“You know, I'm thinking you can hear me, you just don't want to talk. I don't know exactly what happened to your dad, but I know it was something real bad. I think I know how you feel. When I was your age, I saw something.”

Flames lick up along the walls of the house, and the smoke curls through the air like tendrils of fog. He clears his throat. “Anyway. Well, maybe you don't think anyone will listen to you, or, uh...or believe you. I want you to know that I will. You don't even have to say anything. You could draw me a picture of what you saw that day, with your dad, on the lake. Okay, no problem. This is for you.”

He slides the paper across the table to Lucas. “This is my family.” He points at each stick figure in turn, “That's my dad. That's my mom. That's my geek brother, and that's me.”

Lucas doesn’t say anything or look up.

Dean deflates. “All right, so I'm a sucky artist,” he admits. “I'll see you around, Lucas.”

He heads back to Sam and Andrea. As soon as he’s within earshot, Andrea says, “Lucas hasn't said a word, not even to me. Not since his dad's accident.”

“Yeah, we heard,” Dean tells her. “Sorry.”

Andrea nods.

“What are the doctors saying?” Sam asks.

Andrea shrugs helplessly. “That it's a kind of post-traumatic stress.”

“That can't be easy. For either of you,” Sam tells her sympathetically.

Andrea glances at him before looking back at her son. “We moved in with my dad. He helps out a lot. It's just...when I think about what Lucas went through, what he saw...” She trails off, eyes glassy.

Dean swallows. “Kids are strong. You'd be surprised what they can deal with.”

They watch Lucas slipping off the bench and heading towards them, a piece of paper in his hand.

“You know, he used to have such life,” Andrea says. “He was hard to keep up with, to tell you the truth. Now he just sits there. Drawing those pictures, playing with those army men. I just wish-“ she cuts off when Lucas approaches them.

“Hey, sweetie,” Andrea tells him gently.

Lucas hands Dean the paper.

“Thanks,” Dean says, surprised. “Thanks, Lucas.”

He looks down. It's a picture of the Carlton house.

Before he can ask anything, Lucas has already headed back to his crayons and toy soldiers.

**Author's Note:**

> Very sidenote-y sidenote; has anyone here seen Julie and the Phantoms? Bc I'm obsessed and my brain is bullying me into writing a crossover with SPN- and I think I'm gonna do it asjhvfjdsh


End file.
